It is desirable in modern appliances to reduce the energy used to the minimum necessary to accomplish any given task. In the typical automatic ice maker within a refrigerator, a heater is used to heat the ice tray after the water is frozen, to allow the ice to release from the ice tray. After the ice is frozen, the heater may melt a layer of ice back into water. The ice tray is then rotated and the layer of water between the ice and the ice tray allows the ice to slip out of the ice tray and into an ice bin. Typically this type of ice maker is called a “Fixed Mold” ice maker because a shaft running the length of the ice maker down the center axis rotates and fingers coming out of it flip the cubes out of the mold and into the bin.
Stand-alone ice trays may harvest the ice without the use of a heater by twisting the ice tray breaking the bonds of the ice cubes to the tray. Stand-alone ice trays that are manually filled with water may be set in a freezer to freeze into ice, and then removed for harvesting. The ice from a stand-alone tray may be harvested either individually or into an ice bucket. Twisting a stand-alone ice tray breaks the ice connections between ice cubes and ice wells while also deforming the ice tray, thereby forcing the ice cube out of the ice well by mechanical means.